


His Tired Heart

by toodelicatee



Category: Lost
Genre: Death, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 03:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6453292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toodelicatee/pseuds/toodelicatee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An intimate look into the life of Benjamin Linus, from his abusive childhood up until the exact moment of his death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Tired Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apicturewithasmile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apicturewithasmile/gifts).



> This is a character study of, imo, one of the most original and interesting characters I've ever come across. I really hope I got him right. I would really appreciate feedback as this took me quite a while to nail down, and I've been planning it for quite some time too. Thank you.
> 
> This piece is dedicated to apicturewithasmile who writes some of the best Ben Linus characterization and I really love all of your work, and appreciate the feedback on my ongoing series, so I hope you enjoy this. :-)  
> Please go and read their stunning work!

In photographs, his Mother has broad shoulders, wide and strong like a brick house. Her eyes are like his own, lonely rivers- a watery blue, huge and swelling. He hopes they were warmer though, less heavy in the skull. She has thick waves of hair that fall down her chest. A gentle yellow shade, even gentler when the picture catches the light at a good angle. Her mouth looks like it would have been soft; or at least, Ben imagines it that way.  
  
Sometimes when he's sick of the world or when his nerves are shot to hell, he closes his eyes and let's her ghost into his head. She moves gracefully, the way he thinks angels must. Her smile is crooked and whole, on her lips like a welcome. She whispers things he can never discern but it calms him nonetheless.  
  
There are questions he wishes he could have asked her ( _did you love my Father? who were you?_ ) and they gnaw him through and through, all part of a daily routine. There are times when it hurts so much he has to punch something. Has to feel something solid connect with his fist, has to feel the smash, the throng of small agony in his fingers. Pain is becoming more and more meditative as his years pass by, the only anchor he truly knows, the only constant.  
  
Tenderness pours from his Mother's spectre in waves of delicate orange light. His Father's memory is different. Roger only ever appears in the dead crux of night, when the sky's inked in black. It's as though the daylight is his enemy. His features are a mess of flesh and age, mangled into some ugly image that would cause children to scream. His nose never stops bleeding and his eyes are always changing colour. Wicked hands grab at nothing, too drunk to ever properly aim. Ben still cowers like a child, like the little boy that used to make a home out of a locked bathroom, a photograph of his Mother pressed against his chest as he prayed for intervention, for hope, for some other place.  
  
-  
  
"You didn't have to go to all this trouble; I'm only here for six months."  
  
Juliet Burke is bright and overly friendly. She emanates a sugary disposition, one of innocence and compassion, but still there is a steel to her smile. It's fickle, ready to transform into fury at any second. Fickleness is what his days are composed of, it's fickleness that sneaks its way into his gut and twists sharply in both his sides.

There's something about her though, something about the way she slides her hair behind her ears, the way she walks as though barefoot on shards of glass.  
  
Lust has always been some school-yard game to him, one he's never felt allowed to join in with. But he's cold and he feels starved of touch. Juliet shies like a vulnerable roadside animal and Ben wants her instantly.  
  
"You lied to me!" it doesn't take long before she throws her former frailty to the dust. Her rose cheeks are contorted and blazing. Sorrow doesn't suit her, Ben thinks, it hangs on her features making her look twice her age. It lingers like a parasite.  
  
"No Juliet, I did not lie to you,'" he doesn't break however, just looks at her and then the x-ray. He knows too well how to keep his cool, how to play the villain and the saviour and the lost boy and everything in between.  
  
She crashes into his chest like a ship, hitting closed fists on his shoulders as though it might change her situation, as though any part of this were normal, or human. He doesn't touch her, but he could- she's too busy sobbing to flinch or pull away, yet he remains still.

Although their bodies are pressed up close there's miles in between their headspaces, their feelings, their souls. It's like they're stood on either side of a canyon, staring across at each other while a fire quivers beneath, ready to lick them both to death.

Weeks later she'll be shown Goodwin's body. She'll weep like a drama queen, and Ben will call her _his._

In the throbbing parts of his mind, somewhere quite deep down, he knows it's not true. Like all of the women in his life, Annie and Alex and his Mother, none have ever actually been _his._  
  
-  
  
He calls Alex his daughter from the beginning. As soon as he dissuades Charles from snapping her little neck, he takes her in.  
  
She's like porcelain in his hands, his hands that have murdered and plotted and now kidnapped, his hands that have defiled everything they've touched.   
  
It's difficult at first. She cries too much and barely sleeps. He gets used to it eventually, when he watches her taut salmon lips blurt the word _Daddy._  
  
He's happy, briefly. At the time it's enough to put his demons to sleep. Even if it's just for a while.  
  
-  
  
Annie first kisses him when they are sixteen. She leans up to him on the dock before she leaves with her Mother. The dying sunlight is pale on her tan face and she's never looked more beautiful. Her arms snake around his waist and they mould together for a few seconds.  
  
He pulls away and she asks him why. He mentions something about not wanting to make her miss the sub, mentions something about not wanting her Mother to see them. What he doesn't say is the truth that's stinging the backs of his eyes, the roof of his mouth- that he's afraid of wanting, even more, what he knows he can't have.  
  
She leaves, looking back and waving, and his heart starts bursting at the seams.  
  
-  
  
John Locke is an enigma, Ben decides during his time in captivity. Locke wears the skin of a dishevelled man who swallows back desperation with every breath he takes. But Ben knows he's more than that, he _has_ to be. Why else would the island have healed him?   
  
"Thank you for not leaving me, Henry."  
  
He touches Ben's shoulder with genuine appreciation. It's been a while since someone has been thankful toward him. Even his own daughter has built up a thick, unwavering wall of resentment. She can't see that he has good intentions, that he's keeping her safe. She just scowls and tells him that she hates him.  
  
That she wishes he were _dead._  
  
Ben pushes that thought back before it starts to show on his face. He focuses on John, the man still gripping onto his shoulder.  
  
-  
  
His Father's fists have always been heavy. Thick, meaty fingers that're glazed with sweat and trembling as they snatch at his collar, aim at his gut.  
  
"This is a lesson you won't forget, _boy_."  
  
Ben learns to not mind the lessons, to bide the bruises, and accept the fists without complaining. None of it really bothers him. It's the way Roger spits words out of his mouth, as though they were venom, that hurts him.  
  
_Monster. Little beast. Accident. You killed your Mother._  
  
Ben darts up the stairs nearly every night, and cries until his stomach aches, hugging his pillow as though it were a human being, pretending like there's someone that loves him, that cares, that doesn't want to hurt him.  
  
Or at least just someone who notices he's actually there.  
  
When he kills his Father years later, it's over too soon. The blood gushes from his nose and his eyes roll back; Ben has nothing to say.  
  
He doesn't speak when he looks at the other Dharma corpses either. He closes a few dead eyes and when he finally takes his mask off, he breathes in and out. The air tastes cleaner, but his hands are streamed read, filthy. He scrubs them until they bleed, cleans them again, and so the cycle goes.  
  
-  
  
Alex quivering on her knees in the grass, with Keamy's gun pointed at her head is the most brutal scene Ben could have ever imagined. She's too breakable to even look at. If she had been porcelain the first time he'd ever held her, she is wafer thin glass right now.  
  
The mercenary gives her the walkie and her eyelids clench shut, lashes beat hard against each other. He realises he's never told her just how lovely she really is. He hopes Karl got to.  
  
She'll be fine though, and Ben will tell her himself. He'll fix this.  
  
"Daddy," her voice breaks, like a leaf in the wind, "please, help me..."  
  
Keamy aims the gun more straightly. He wouldn't do this though, Ben's sure. Charles would never have ordered it, would never have dreamed of breaking their rules. Ben's not giving himself up when there's to be no consequence for refusal. They'd never hurt his child.  
  
Nine.  
  
"She's not my daughter."  
  
Eight.  
  
"I stole her as a baby from an insane woman. She's a pawn, nothing more. She means nothing to me."  
  
He can fix this, he can. Keamy will realise his mistake in holding Alex hostage, he'll let her go.

Ben's heart's beating somewhere in the middle of his throat, causing his voice to wobble but all will be fine.

Alex has already given in, looking down at the ground despondent. But she doesn't know about the rules. Ben will fix this and everything will be all right.

  
"I'm not coming out of this house, so if you wanna kill her, go ahead and do it-"  
  
A single shot.  
  
Her body falls, head-first to the ground.   
  
Every piece of light is gone, all the hope he has ever felt, however intangible, stops breathing the moment Alex does. Ben finds her body and kisses her forehead. It's cold under his mouth. He understands immediately that nothing good will ever _be_ again. There's only darkness left. There can be no art, no poetry, no music or love, not after his daughter is dead.  
  
-  
  
John Locke fucks him for the first with his eyes closed, and Ben does the same mid-way through. They claw at each other like some sort of battle. In many ways that's exactly what it is. Whoever comes first has lost. That's how it goes.  
  
"You're a bastard," Locke gasps, with sweat on his forehead and a hand around Ben's throat, "you're a bastard."  
  
He hears Alex's voice calling him the same, and he can feel his eyes start to leak. It's not uncommon for him to do this nowadays. John's used to it. Sometimes he even tries to hold him afterwards. It never brings comfort but it's something at least.  
  
Ben breathes harder, burying his face into John's shoulder. When they wake the next morning, they're both still there. Ben can't quite believe it at first, that John hasn't got up and left during the night.  
  
"Are you okay?" Locke asks, his voice clement as though he actually cares.  
  
Ben nods, "Better now, thank you," and John kisses his mouth without aggression. It's slow and tender, so foreign but so perfect that Ben prays for it to last.  
  
He hopes this is something he can keep.  
  
-  
  
Jack beats him bloody on a green hill and Ben tells himself it's exactly what he deserves.  
  
Alex's ghost grabs his shoulders and throws him against a rock wall. He deserves it.  
  
All he wants is what he wants, and he doesn't get it. He doesn't deserve to.

  
-  
  
Ben finds his peace on the island when he's second in command to Hugo- the kindest man Ben's ever met. He's never felt more safe with anyone in his life.

Sometimes when Hugo starts off on a tangent about something, Ben forgets what it feels like to be lonely, to be small, to be so miserable you can't even breathe. He sinks back into the sand and listens to the story being told. He often smiles.  
  
"You've changed, dude," Hugo tells him one day. They're catching fish in the sea, both of their trousers rolled up to their ankles, "like a lot."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"You're a good guy now."  
  
Ben thanks him, but he doesn't agree. That's probably Hugo's only vice. He's _too good_  , kind and forgiving to a fault.  
  
-  
  
When Ben dies, it's because of another tumor. This one's on his brain. He feels ill for months before he realises he's dying. His headaches worsen over time, and Hugo finds him mid-seizure under a tree. He nurses him back to semi health and takes him on a boat to a specialist, who says something about having six or seven weeks left.  
  
Hugo moves heaven on earth trying to get another, _different,_  opinion but they all end up the same.  
  
"Let's go back to the island," Ben says.  
  
"No, you need treatment, and I'm not gonna let you go through it alone, dude, no way."  
  
"It won't achieve anything, I'll still die, maybe not as quickly but soon enough," he closes his eyes, "besides, I'd rather go home first.'  
  
A crack appears in Hugo's chin, as though he's about to cry, but he nods instead. He nods.  
  
Death comes slow and painfully three weeks later. He tries to hide the way his head is splitting itself in two, the way his whole body is at war. He tells Hugo it doesn't hurt but the man starts crying anyway.  
  
Ben watches the sea, the softness of the waves lapping against the shore. He doesn't want to die. Not yet, not now that he's found something worth living for, but it doesn't matter too much. If there's a God and He knows at least one thing about mercy, perhaps Ben will be allowed to see Alex again. Even just for a moment.  
  
Though his senses are growing numb, he still feels Hugo's hand squeezing his own, so tightly his bones almost break under the pressure.   
  
"You're going to be ok, Hugo," he whispers, "and _thank you_."  
  
Ben's eyes start to flicker open and shut. He sees a bird, black and beautiful, swoop overhead. It circles the only cloud in the sky for a few moments before it soars closer to the sun. Ben watches it until his eyes aren't seeing any more.  
  
\-    
  
FIN.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
